CA8: Police dog’s accidental biting of guest of officer not 4A excessive force

Police dog’s charging and biting a guest of the officer was accidental, not excessive force. Fourth Amendment claim dismissed. Whitworth v. Kling, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 1039 (8th Cir. Jan. 17, 2024) (The court cited a 1999 Arkansas case that the Arkansas constitution’s search and seizure provision is interpreted the same as the Fourth Amendment, completely ignoring a series of cases starting in 2002 (Griffin v. State, 347 Ark. 788, 67 S.W.3d 582 (2002); State v. Sullivan, 348 Ark. 647, 74 S.W.3d 215 (2002) (I argued Sullivan.); State v. Harmon, 353 Ark. 568, 113 S.W.3d 75 (2003)) saying that it is not, depending on the issue. Either the law clerks should be ashamed of themselves for obviously sloppy work, or it’s intentional to attempt to cloud Arkansas law, which is none of this court’s business. Also, for what it’s worth, the entire Arkansas court has turned over since then, so we can only hope they will follow precedent.)

“In this case, Officer Simmons had the requisite probable cause of criminal activity to search Mr. Rinella’s vehicle. The unchallenged factual findings establish that Officer Simmons observed multiple indicators of criminal activity, including the unusually long stop at the intersection, abnormal nervousness, avoiding eye contact, and fixation on the backpack in the front passenger seat. Mr. Rinella told Officer Simmons that he was traveling to an establishment known to be associated with drug trafficking. He also admitted that he had smoked marijuana earlier in the day, that there may be a marijuana roach in the vehicle, and that a K-9 sniff would probably alert for marijuana.” State v. Appellant, 2024-Ohio-152 (9th Dist. Jan. 17, 2024).*